Antiracism

This is a relatively new area of the East Cheshire Quaker website where we will be featuring content relevant to our commitment to being an antiracist church. Please check back regularly for new content about racial justice.

 

New racial justice workshop: Available now!

The ECAM Racial Justice Group are happy to announce a new workshop. This will be facilitated by Till Geiger. If you are interested, please contact either Véronique Pin-Fat or Ann Lewis. Also attached is the complete programme of workshops for 2024, including 'Unlearning racism' and 'White allyship'. We are supported by ECAM and can attend your Local Meeting at no cost to you. Please feel free to get in touch if you have any queries.

 

 

Quakers, Britain’s imperial past and reparations session

This workshop explores why Quakers are currently exploring our involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and its legacy. This exploration aims to provide the basis for an informed discussion of the issue of reparations before Britain Yearly Meeting. 

 

I.Openings 

II.Commitment to become an anti-racist church and a sustainable church.

  • Locate in the testimonies particularly peace and justice
  • Locate in campaign to abolish the slave trade and eventually slavery

 

III.Reflection Prompt 

  • Should we assume individual/corporate responsibility for transatlantic slave trade and our extraction of resources/human capital/wealth? 
  • Was George Fox a Racist?
  • Was Woodbrooke built with money derived from the exploitation of worker on cocoa plantations? 

IV.Historical exploration 

  • Connection between capitalism and imperialism/Atlantic slave trade
  • Quakers as part of the Atlantic slave trade (eg small arms manufacture, slave trade and plantations)
  • Quakers as colonists - treatment of First Nations in the USA
  • Wealth accumulation and industrial revolution in Britain

 

V.Implications for Quakers today 

  • Continued exploitation of the global south
  • Structural racism
  • Our complicity and inability to escape capitalism 

 

VI.Worship sharing: How might we think about reparation now?  

Attachments: 
PDF icon Outline ECAM RJG sessions 2024.pdf

Racial justice: Quotations for spiritual reflection

The ECAM Racial Justice Group offer you a few quotations on racial justice that you may wish to contemplate, in order to explore what's involved in being anti-racist as a Quaker. Thank you to Ann Lewis for compiling them. 

You are welcome to download the full collection. 

"‘Our Quaker wish to believe in the fundamental goodness of each individual doesn’t help here. We can be as individually good as we like but unless we actively work to dismantle a system that maintains

white people in a global leadership role with a perceived right to extract wealth from countries that have already been made poor, we will continue to inadvertently act against our testimonies." 

Helen Minnis, Swarthmore lecturer 2022.

 

 

 

 

 

Attachments: 
PDF icon Some quotations about race for spiritual reflection.pdf

Meeting for Learning: Bayard Rustin led by Till Geiger

Sunday, 21. January 2024 - 12:00 to 13:00
Disley Quaker Meeting House

Till Geiger will lead an exploration of the life of Bayard Rustin and what he may mean for us now.

 

By Leffler, Warren K., photographer; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:59, 25 November 2010 (UTC) - This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID ppmsc.01272.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12143472

 

 

 

Dates of Racial Justice Reading Group

Invitation from Disley LM to all Friends in ECAM to join us in a Book Group to discuss on Zoom Helen Minnis’ 2022 Swarthmore Lecture ‘Perceiving the Temperature of the Water – Quakers speak about Racism’.

Dear Friends,

At Yearly Meeting 2022 we resolved to work towards becoming an anti-racist faith community – quite a challenge.  This is just one contribution to helping us to think about how we can do that. 

The group will run on 4 Wednesdays in 2024: Jan. 31st, Feb. 7th, 14th and 28th from  7:00-8.30pm on Zoom. We hope you will be able to commit to all 4 sessions but if you cannot, we would rather you came to some rather than none. The Zoom meeting ID is: 331 243 767.

 

‘Perceiving the Temperature of the Water – Quakers speak about Racism’ is a wonderful lecture. Click on the link so you can taste some of what the 2022 Yearly Meeting audience experienced in May 2022.

 

The expectation is that you will have also read the book which was published after the lecture. Copies are available from the Quaker Book Shop at Friends House for £10. Our experience is that it takes time for copies to be delivered so try to order as soon as possible.

 

Please let Ann Lewis know whether you would like to receive further detailed information about what we have planned in terms of format, etc by January 24th 2024.

 

We hope the group will be an opportunity to share all the ideas in Helen Minnis’ lecture.

In Friendship,

Ann Lewis, convenor.

On behalf of Karl Beswick, Bridget Dunbar, Paul Gee and Jan Vulliamy. 

Perceiving the Temperature of the Water - Disley Racial Justice Reading Group

Disley Meeting are planning to read Helen Minnis’s Swarthmore lecture 2022 called ‘Perceiving the Temperature of the Water’ (cost £10). The idea is to host  4/6 sessions on a weeknight at the end of January through February 2024 on Zoom. Disley hope it will be open to all Friends in ECAM. Details to be sent to all clerks as soon as dates have been confirmed.

Friends can purchase the Swarthmore lecture from the Quaker bookshop here: https://bookshop.quaker.org.uk/Perceiving-the-temperature-of-the-water_9781739226008

Helen Minnis' Swarthmore lecture is also available to watch on YouTube.